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The best thing to be said for Scurry was its lack of Artisans.
This was also its biggest fault, because a town full of tradespeople need someone to pay them for their trade.
Say what they might about rich folk, the Crafters would still line up to wash a swank’s clothes, cook their meals, raise their children, polish their shoes.
A lesser pay by far than the mines and factories, but one tended to keep their minds and limbs intact far longer for it.
Before she left Scurry forever, my mother laundered and mended clothing for rich folk, which is to say, she found herself continuously jobless with her limbs and senses in perfect working condition.
Scurry pockets were shallow all over. They always had been.
If you had something to sell to your fellow parishioners, it ought to be something they couldn’t live without.
Scurry folk only wanted what they needed. Swanks only wanted everything
It was enough to push nearly every inhabitant of Scurry beneath the thumb of the House—but not Rose Harrow.
With Dad in the mines, Ma seemed determined to keep all of her whole.
I’d like to presume it was for my sake. Everything I remember of my mother leading up to abandonment indicated she had loved me.
Everything I’d learnt of her since indicated that she’d left for that same love.
But children don’t know why their parents leave. They just wait for them to come back.
There are other things I remember: drawings, embroideries, flower pressings, painted china.
She and I going door to door with these wares, trying to sell rich things to poor folk, Ma’s smile waning between doors.
Every so often, there would be a widower with his soles peeling away from his boots and a coat with popped stitching and bed linen that hadn’t been seen to in months.
From them, Ma found remit. The other times were grim indeed.
Say what you like about swanks, but a poor town needs a few rich folk.
There were times so desperate that days seemed to pass in which Ma never stopped crying.
My father is absent from my memory on these days.
Perhaps they’d fought, and he’d taken refuge in the pub.
Perhaps he was just working a shift. But it was usually on these days that Rose’s brother came knocking, and when Harland Seymour knocked, one had no choice but to open the door.
I knew very little about my uncle before my mother left Scurry, but when your mother is scared of something, you know to be scared too.
“Upstairs,” she’d say when the knock came, and it was so imploring that I never argued. I sat on the topmost step, where I could hear but not be seen.
“Sister,” Harland would say, and she’d try to block the door. To head him off.
“He ain’t here,” Ma would tell him. “I don’t know where he is.” Sometimes, this was enough to send him away.
On one occasion, perhaps the very last, it wasn’t.
“That ain’t any way to greet your kin, now is it?” Harland said, and I heard him push his way inside, heard the floorboards creak beneath his feet. Another pair of boots followed, then another. Everywhere Kicker went, his crew followed.
“What do you want?” Ma said. She had a way of flattening her voice, her body, as though to shrink the target. “Nina’s sleepin’. I don’t want her wakin’ up.”
“Aye? She alive, then? Ain’t seen her round.”
“By design,” Rose said shortly. “What d’you want?”
A grunt of laughter from Harland. “Ol’ Fletcher finds himself in arrears again, Rosie.”
“And I’ve told you not to sell to him more times than I can count,” Ma said in reply, her voice still in that carefully neutral tone.
It did not rise in anger or accusation. I thought that if I could have seen her in that moment, her eyes would have been firmly planted somewhere out a window, or over Harland’s shoulder.
“And send the poor bloke into the ground with naught to help him fight the shakes?” Harland admonished. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sister. What I’m doin’ for him is humane. Charitable—”
“What do you want?” Ma repeated in her deadened way.
“Well, that’s just the thing,” Harland said slowly, and I heard the creak of his boots as he moved.
“I doubt I’ll find anythin’ here worth what Fletcher owes, will I?
Bloody hell.” He picked up something, perhaps a dish, then dropped it noisily.
“He’s fuckin’ lowly, Rosie. You sure can pick ’em. Look at this place, eh?”
“I’ve told you, Nina’s sleepin—”
“Then you’ll come with me quietly,” Harland said then, “and be back by mornin’.”
Silence from the room below. A pounding in my small chest.
“I can’t leave her alone,” Rose said. “She—she wakes in the night.”
“Ah, she’ll be fine! What’s one night, eh? One night, and we’re square. I’ve got a nice chap from Baymouth who wants to make your acquaintance, and between you and me, his business is worth more than any debt Fletcher could incur in his lifetime.”
I thought this chap from Baymouth must have clothes in desperate need of repair. If you wanted to sell something to a Crafter, it had to be something they couldn’t live without.
There was a padding of boots. A door closing. Silence.
I slept on that topmost step, waiting for morning.
Children don’t know why their parents leave.
They just wait for them to come back.